Welcome to
BJARS.Com! This site is designed to be an
online repository of useful tools, resources, demos, source code and disassemblies related to the
Classic Video Game consoles,
primarily the Atari 2600 and
Atari 7800. I've also
added some of my old Commodore
64 games from the early 80's,
and some
old Windows games that I made
too. You'll also
find lots of other original
Atari homebrew games,
game hacks, and custom applications developed by myself
available here.

Recent
Content Updates:

It's been a
while! There is some new content as of April
2020. I really need to go through my site and
add some more new stuff!

Added
new box art and a French/English version of the
manual for
GateRacer II on 2/28/2014. Special thanks
to Horeus at
Allgamers.fr for sharing those. I also added the
new "Favorites"
and "My
Original C64 Projects
" sections to this page. I started the
favorites section with lots of downloads related to
Indenture, and the C64 section with the very first
game I ever wrote, Cave Dave.

Lots of new content related to the Atari7800 was
added on 7/17/2014. The entire page is brand
new, check it out
here.

Cave In is a large adventure game for
the Atari 2600, inspired by the 2600 versions of Raiders
of the lost ark and Adventure.
Click Here to jump to the Cave In area of my
website, which includes the instructions on how to play the
game, as well as other files and documents I created
during the development process. For more info, you can visit the AtariAge forum thread
here.

Would
you like to see CaveIn in action? Download
the Level One Playthrough
here. Be warned, it shows how to beat the game, so
don't watch if you want to figure it out for
yourself. You'll notice throughout the game
that I seem to be recharging myself. There is
a health cheat in the game, you can look at the Cave
In of my page for more info on various secrets I
revealed several years after it's cartridge releease.

Cave In is
available for purchase on cart at the AtariAge store. The $30
purchase price includes the cartridge and a
professionally printed manual. You can see screenshots
and download the game and manual on bjars.com
here.
If you'd like, you can also purchase a
professionally printed box for the game for an
additional $30.

All of my proceeds
for Cave In will be donated to
Autism Speaks. Autism is one of the fastest
growing developmental disabilities in the US, with 1
in 91 children being diagnosed (as of October 2009).
It knows no cultural or racial boundaries, and that
number is increasing every year. My son was
diagnosed with Autism at the age of two, 9 years
ago. So much has been discovered and learned since
then, but there is still no cure. By purchasing Cave
In you're not just getting a great game for the
Atari 2600, you're also contributing to a great
cause that needs everyone's attention, and you're
helping to fund research that will hopefully find a
cure. Thank you for your support and your interest
in Cave In, and for helping my wife and I support
Autism Speaks.

Gate
Racer II

Just like in the original
Gate Racer, the object is to drive through the scrolling gates while
avoiding hitting the barriers, sides of the road, or oil
slicks. This version was expanded to 4K to include some
new options.

New to Gate Racer II is the addition of
an options screen that lets you customize the difficulty
of the game, as well as a high score save option.
The default options are how I generally play the game
and match the 2K version. The new selectable
options are Velocity (on/off), Oil Slick (on/off), Car
Size (big/small) and Powerup (on/off).

The basic gameplay is the same, there's a clock timer (that shows
minutes/seconds/tenths of seconds) at the bottom and the
object is simply to survive on the road as long as you
can. Your final time is displayed when you crash. Hitting fire then restarts the game
to the title screen, saves your high score if it's
higher than your previous time, and displays your high
score at the bottom of the title screen.

Note that saving high scores will only
work if you have an AtariVox or SaveKey plugged in to
your console (if you're running this on a
harmony cart).
The save feature works in Stella too but you need to
activate the SaveKey on controller port 2. This can be
done by launching Stella from the command line with
stella -rc savekey GateRacerII.bin
or in the GUI by highlighting the game, clicking on
Options | Game Properties | Controller Tab | P1
Controller | SaveKey. If the titlescreen score remains a
blank white strip on the bottom of the screen after more
than one play, you probably haven't properly activated
the SaveKey in Stella

If you want to compile this game
yourself, you'll need all of the modified batari basic
include files (in a zip file in the downloads section)
along with the Atarivox include files from AA user
RevEng's post
here. The original AA Thread about this version of
the game is
here.

Gate Racer II had a
limited production run
of 20 carts and it is no
longer availble for
purchase from me.
You can have a custom
cart made at
AtariAge.com, but it may
not include the label.

Adventure
Plus

Adventure Plus is a hack
of the original 2600
Adventure game. It
features many changes
over the original, below
is my original list of
changes. It is
available for purchase
on cart at
the AtariAge store.

Title Screen Added ("Adventure+"). Thanks to Channel 2, who helped removed the flicker.

The Left and right border walls have been removed in the main corridor (underneath the original location of the yellow castle), allowing you to warp from one side to the other.

Game 1: Red Dragon added, one new (semi-hidden, accessible only with the bridge) room added to blue maze, many item locations changed.

Game 2: Many items are in new locations, including the Chalice. If you have trouble finding the Chalice, drop us a line and we'll give you a hint.

I
recently added my new Atari 7800
homebrew game "Dungeon
Stalker" as well as my new
Atari 2600 homebrew game "Diamond
Drop". Dungeon Stalker is my first
game with AtariVox Speech, that
was incredibly fun to work on!
It's still a WIP but should be
in the AtariAge store sometime
this year.

7/16/2014: Site Move
Progress / New Graphics

I
clicked on every single link on
this site and everything should
be working now. That took
a really long time!

I
updated the top graphic to
remove "Atari 2600 Archives"
and change it to "Atari
Archives" since the site includes more
than just that now. I just added a new
Atari 7800 tab, there's lots of
new 7800 related content.
I've recently started using RevEng's excellent
7800basic programming
environment and have started
development on some 7800
homebrew games.

7/14/2014: Site Move
Progress

All of the picture links are
fixed and I'm just getting
started on checking all of the
download links. There are
hundreds on this site and all of
them need to be verified, it
will take a while.

The site went down on July 9th
due to going over my 1GB
bandwidth allocation. I
contacted Al at
AtariAge.com and he agreed
to host the site. It was
moved on 7/10/2014. This should
finally be the end of site
outages due to bandwidth
consumption! Many thanks
to Al for hosting my site.

Due to differences on the server
that hosts the site regarding
case sensitivity some links may
be broken and that will take
time to fix. If you notice
any broken links starting in
August 2014, feel free to email
me at se-screen at yahoo dot
com, prior to that I will be
slowly reviewing each page to
make corrections. In
addition, the hosted forum I was
using will no longer function.
I am looking at alternatives,
but for now it is down
indefinitely.

2/28/2014: Bandwidth
was not exceeded in February!

It's the last day of the month
so I did a quick check on
bandwidth consumption. I'm
at 633MB as of this morning,
which is 63% of my allowance.
I guess most of the bandwidth
last month was from myself and
the tons of transfers done with
the site overhaul.

1/30/2014: Traffic Quota
Exceeded on January 29th, 2014

For the first time since I
created this website in 2006 I
exceeded the traffic quota of
1GB that's imposed by my web
host, doteasy.com. That's
all you get with their no-cost
plan. I suppose some of
the traffic was from myself this
month with all the updates I was
making. My apologies if
you see the site go down for a
few days at the end of the month
in the future because of this
restriction, I'm not planning on
upgrading my hosting plan.

1/3/2014: Bjars Bug Fixes

I
rolled out the new design in
only 7 hours, every page was
created new. As I
expected, there were broken
links and little mistakes on
just about every page. It
will be an ongoing process, but
hopefully I'll have everything
nailed down within the next
week.

1/2/2014:
Site Overhaul!

I
originally designed this site
very quickly in 2006 and haven't
changed the layout since then.
I thought it was time to update
it and make it a bit more
useful. The original site
was very narrow and optimized
for an 800x600 monitor, and I
think most people have updated
from that by now.

Don't remember what the site
looked like before the redesign?
Click on the image below.
The older design was much
narrower, which limited the
number of link buttons I could
add at the top and how much
content I could squeeze on to
one page. I also created
an actual home page for the
site, the index link formerly
took you directly to the hacks
page.

I just added this
section, so right now
there's only one
favorite item. :) I'm
planning on adding Atari
related content here
that doesn't really fit
in anywhere else on the
site.

Indenture

Indenture is a DOS based
Adventure game written
by Craig Pell in
1995-1996. It was based
on the original Atari
2600 game Adventure.
Craig greatly expanded
the game (300 rooms are
included), added a
couple of new castles,
another dragon and even
more objects. As a
long time fan of the
original Adventure, I
was excited when I
stumbled upon this game
many years ago.

AtariAge user edyensid
created a set of maps
for the games that are
posted below. You can
read the original thread
here.

Dumproom is a utility
written by
Dennis Jenkins that
will provide a dump of
the room data to a text
file. Run it from
the same directory that
you have Indenture
copied to.
You can download the
dumproom utility and the
"all rooms" output
below. I've
included an example of
the dumproom options as
seen from the command
line, and a sample
output:

I stumbled upon Bob
Eichler's Indenture page
here when searching
for information about
Indenture. Rather
than just linking to his
page I included his
content for download
here as well. He
created a great
walkthrough and shared a
picture of what the
final screen looks like
when you win the game.

AtariAge user e1will
(Will Nicholes) started
on an Atari 2600 clone
of Indenture. You
can read about it in the
original thread
here.

What? C64 Stuff on
an Atari page? :)
Once I moved on from the
Atari 2600 my next
machine was a Commodore
64, which I absolutely
loved. That
"READY!" prompt
constantly beckoned me
to be creative.
Thanks to my
uIEC device and a
C64 app (D64it)
that automatically
transfers original C64
disks to a D64 on a
memory card, I was able
to easily archive all of
my old C64 stuff from
the early 80's.
I'll probably add a few
more old games and apps
I wrote to this section
out of pure nostalgia.
Cave Dave is special
because it's the first
game I ever made.
I do see the irony of
using "Cave" in the name
my first game, and then
"Cave In" was my first
released game.
Funny how that worked
out!

Cave
Dave

Cave Dave is a simple
platform game I wrote as
a kid in 1984 using
Commodore 64 V2 BASIC.
It's the very first time
I ever attempted to make
a "real" game. I
figured out quickly how
limited (and slow) BASIC
really is. When I
was in the middle of
designing the 2nd level
for the game, all of a
sudden random X's were
appearing in my code
when I'd list it, and
Random glitches would
appear in the game when
it was run even though
no changes had been made
to the first screen.
I assumed at the time
that I'd hit the 38,911k
RAM limit before I
finished the game.
The object of the game
is to walk around the
screen and pick up all
the treasures by pushing
up and pressing the fire
button. Once
you've collected them
all the ladder to the
top platform opens up
where you can rescue
your brother ('brother'
is what I put on the cut
scene, I don't remember
my original back story
anymore). You can't
jump.

My original intention
was to create rolling
barrels on the
platforms, similar to
Donkey Kong, which never
happened because I hit
that memory limitation.
I never learned C64
assembly because I
simply didn't have the
resources available to
me. I knew about
it as an option, but
never acquired a book or
assembler application to
even try to learn it.
I sure wish we'd had the
internet back then!

This is the original
BASIC source code,
converted to a standard
text file. It
won't load on a real
C64. Includes the
random "X's"! :)

Cave Dave Screenshots

Fireball

Fireball is another
early game attempt, I
don't really rememeber
much about this one and
the source code wasn't
dated. I'm
guessing it's from 1984.
The object seems to be
to move back and forth
and shoot as many
fireballs as you can
from the playfield
before the 60 second
timer runs out.

This is the original
BASIC source code,
converted to a standard
text file. It
won't load on a real
C64.

Tic Tac Toe Screenshots

Odell
Woods

I remember visiting the
computer lab at my
Father's school in 1983
(he was a teacher) and
playing a game called
"Odell Woods" on a Radio
Shack TRS-80 Model III.
It was a simple text
based adventure game
that had you walking in
the woods and making
decisions about what to
do. The original
game was made by the
Minnesota Educational
Computing Corporation
and the package was
called "Odell Outdoor
Biology". It also
included a game called
Odell Lake. I
found a copy of the
original with a google
search, you can dowload
the D64 file
here.

I decided to make my own
simple version of the
game myself. The
source code says that I
finished it on 5/9/1984.
It's nowhere near as
involved as the original
that it's based on, but
I remember having great
fun creating this little
knock off.

Here's another section
of this site that just
doesn't fit in anywhere
else. I recently
dug up an old Windows
game called DrugWarz
that I wrote with Visual
Basic 4.0 in the mid
1990's. It's a
32bit app.
It won't launch
on my Windows 8.1 64bit
laptop, but launches
fine on my Windows 7 SP1
64bit laptop at work.
Go figure. You may
need an older PC to run
this one. I was
thinking about it during latest update to this
website and
found my old DrugWarz
website on
the wayback machine, it
was on Geocities.
I also found another old
app in a stack of
floppies called M-Base,
a music catalog app for
Windows.

DrugWarz

Here's the original text
from my old site (copied
from the wayback
machine) straight from
1999.

This game is
inspired by an old
DOS game called
Dopewars, which I
spent many an hour
playing back in the
old days. I loved
playing the game,
but there were many
things in the game
that I thought could
have been improved
upon. I wanted to
write my own updated
windows version,
adding more features
and changing certain
functions of the
game I thought could
have been done
better. It's still a
simple, turn-based,
single screen, luck
of the numbers game,
but it's based on
the classic gameplay
of games made before
the introduction of
a processor that ran
faster than 10mhz!

This game is not
perfect, it still
has a few quirks
here and there. It's
been a weekend
project, and I don't
have much time to
spend. I'm a network
support analyst with
a family and a life,
which doesn't leave
much time for little
side projects like
this...updates may
be few and far
between. It's
written in Visual
Basic 4.

Here you go.
You'll need to download
the comctl32.ocx and
vb40032.dll files in
order to run the
executable. You can put
them in the same
directory as the
executable. If you
have an older Win 9x
machine you can run the
actual setup files.

Note that the game
runs best on a Win9x
system. I
successfully got it to
run on my Win7 64 bit
laptop, but the letters
in the app that are
supposed to be white and
yellow appear grey.
Running it via WMWare on
an original Windows 98
SE image it worked
perfectly.

The original inspiration
for the game. It's
DOS based and from the
late 1980's/early 1990's
I think.

DrugWarz
related screenshots
(click on image for
larger view)

Running on the Windows 98 VMWare image, it
looks perfect.

Below is what it looks
like running on Windows
7 64bit. You can
see the numbers are grey
and harder to read.

M-Base

M-Base is an old
music catalog
tool I wrote to
inventory my
collection, I
wrote the first
version in 1995.
It was written
in Visual Basic
3.0 and is
16-bit only, it
won't run on any
modern operating
systems. I
was able to
launch it in
Windows 3.11
running in
DOSBox. To
the left is the
original icon I
designed for it.
:)

There is no
installation
tool for this
one, it has all
the files you'll
need in the zip
and it can be
run in any
directory.

My name is Steve
Engelhardt, also known
as Atarius Maximus on
AtariAge. I
originally created this site as a
useful repository for
those interested in
learning how to program
the Atari 2600, and as a
personal site as well to
feature the hacks, games,
and
applications that I've
written personally. I've always learned best
by example and without
these samples of code I
wouldn't have been able
to complete many of my
games. If you're
interested in learning,
the best place to ask
questions by far are the
programming
forums at
AtariAge.Com.
There are a lot of
people that are
passionate about the
Atari at AA and are very
willing to help out
someone who's starting
to learn.

I'm an
IT guy during the day
and a family man with
kids by night, which
leaves very little time
to pursue my hobbies.
That's why I usually
create no more than one
game in a year. :)
All of my favorite
hobbies involve
trying to be creative in
some way, I like
making my own music, my
own art, and my own
video games. While
playing old Atari games
is fun I must say that
creating them is much
more satisfying!

Why did I name the site
Bjars? Each letter
is the first initial of
a member of my family.